3. THE NUMBER OF FAILURES AND THE SEMESTER OF DROPPING OUT FOR THE NON-GRADUATES

The pages preceding this point have given evidence that the failing pupils are not mainly the ones who drop out early. But we may still ask whether the number of failures per individual tends to determine how early he will be eliminated? This question calls for the facts of the next table. In this table the semesters of dropping out are indicated at the top. The failures range as high as 25 per pupil, and it is evident that not all pupils have left school until the eleventh semester. The distribution includes the 1156 boys and the 1292 girls who failed and did not graduate; also the 694 boys and the 1063 girls who dropped out without failing. The wide distribution of these non-graduates both relative to the number of failures and to the time of dropping out, is forcibly brought to our attention by the table which follows.

TABLE IX

DISTRIBUTION OF THE NON-GRADUATES, ACCORDING TO THE TOTAL FAILURES EACH AND THE TIME OF DROPPING OUT

NO. OF	SEMESTER OF DROPPING OUT
FAILURES	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	TOTAL

0 B.	430	134	40	41	15	24	7	3	0	. .	. .	694
G.	643	163	89	78	27	45	12	5	1	. .	. .	1063
													1757
1 B.	35	53	25	33	14	9	1	1	. .	. .	. .	171
G.	46	65	25	34	12	12	4	3	. .	. .	. .	201
													372
2 B.	52	58	18	30	8	17	5	6	. .	. .	. .	194
G.	49	79	31	36	12	17	3	3	. .	. .	. .	230
													424
3 B.	43	41	22	28	9	10	5	1	0	. .	. .	159
G.	54	52	19	34	18	17	0	6	1	. .	. .	201
													360
4 B.	27	31	13	32	7	11	9	2	. .	. .	. .	132
G.	34	43	23	29	11	16	5	8	. .	. .	. .	169
													301
5 B.	3	13	14	30	11	16	11	4	. .	. .	. .	102
G.	2	14	18	24	5	13	3	5	. .	. .	. .	84
													186
6 B.	. .	27	8	24	11	16	11	6	0	0	. .	103
G.	. .	17	14	25	10	11	3	9	2	1	. .	92
													195
7 B.	. .	8	7	7	6	16	5	3	0	1	. .	53
G.	. .	9	3	15	8	7	5	5	0	0	. .	52
													105
8 B.	. .	8	3	14	6	11	6	5	1	0	. .	54
G.	. .	10	5	15	7	10	6	6	1	1	. .	61
													115
9 B.	. .	1	1	7	5	8	2	7	3	1	. .	35
G.	. .	0	2	7	8	9	2	4	1	0	. .	33
													68
10 B.	. .	2	2	10	2	7	6	10	0	. .	. .	39
G.	. .	2	1	6	5	9	4	4	0	. .	. .	31
													70
11-15 B.	. .	. .	1	8	7	27	14	22	5	2	0	86
G.	. .	. .	1	5	12	22	20	23	9	6	2	100
													186
16-20 B.	. .	. .	. .	1	0	8	3	6	3	3	0	24
G.	. .	. .	. .	0	2	3	3	12	6	2	2	30
													54
21-25 B.	. .	. .	. .	. .	. .	. .	. .	2	1	1	. .	4
G.	. .	. .	. .	. .	. .	. .	1	3	3	1	. .	8
													12
TOTAL B.	590	376	154	263	101	180	85	78	13	8	0	1850
G.	828	454	231	308	137	191	71	96	24	11	4	2355
													4205

[Table IX] reads in a manner similar to [Table VIII]: 430 boys and 643 girls, having failures, drop out in the first semester; 35 boys and 46 girls drop out in the first semester with a single failure; 3 boys and 2 girls drop out in the first semester with five failures each.

For a small portion of these drop-outs the number of failures is undoubtedly the prime or immediate factor in securing their elimination. It seems probable that such is the situation for most of those pupils who drop out after 50 per cent or more of their school work has resulted in failures. Yet a few of these pupils manage to continue for an extended time in school, as the following distribution shows.

DROP-OUTS FAILING IN 50 PER CENT OR MORE OF THEIR TOTAL WORK,
AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION BY SEMESTERS OF DROPPING OUT

	SEMESTERS
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
221 B.	81	69	17	24	7	15	4	2	1	1
264 G.	98	68	20	35	14	10	5	8	5	1
% of Total	36.9	28.2	7.6	12.2	4.3	5.2	1.9	2.0	1.2	.4

This grouping includes 485 pupils, or 11.5 per cent of the total number of 4,205 drop-outs. But whatever the part may be that is played by failing it is evident that it does not operate to cause their early loss to the school in nearly all of these instances. It may be noted here that it is difficult to find any justification for allowing or forcing these pupils to endure two, three, or four years of a kind of training for which they have shown themselves obviously unfitted. To be sure, they have satisfied a part of these failures by repetitions or otherwise, but only to go on adding more failures. A device of 'superannuation' is employed in certain schools by which a pupil who has failed in half of his work for two semesters, and is sixteen years of age, is supposed to be dropped automatically from the school. This device seems designed to evade a difficulty in the absence of any real solution for it, and harmonizes with the school aims that are prescribed in terms of subject matter rather than in terms of the pupils' needs. From the standpoint of the individual pupil his peculiar qualities are not likely to be fashioned to the highest degree of usefulness by this procedure. It simply serves notice that the pupil must make the adjustment needed, as the school cannot or will not.

Notwithstanding the testimony furnished by the accumulation of failures shown in [Table IX], there are grounds for believing that for the major portion of all the non-graduates the number of failures is not a prime nor perhaps a highly important cause of their dropping out of school. This conviction seems to be substantiated by the statement of percentages below.

THE PERCENTAGE OF NON-GRADUATES WHO DROP OUT WITH

0 Failures	1 or 0 Failures	2 or fewer Failures	3 or fewer Failures	4 or fewer Failures	5 or fewer Failures
41.8	50.6	60.7	69.2	76.4	80.8

The fact that nearly 81 per cent of the non-graduates have only 5 failures or less, taken in comparison with the fact that approximately one fourth of the failing graduates have 8 or more failures, argues that the number of failures alone can hardly be considered one of the larger factors in causing the dropping out. In a report concerning the working children of Cincinnati, H.T. Wooley remarks[33a] that "two-thirds of our children leaving the public schools are the failures." This seems to suppose failing a large cause of the dropping out. But this investigation of failure indicates that the percentage of failure for those leaving is no higher than for the ones who do not leave. A similar illustration is credited to O.W. Caldwell[34], who makes reference to the large percentage of the failing pupils who leave high school, without taking any recognition of the equally large percentage of the failing pupils who continue in the high school.

There is in no sense any intention here to condone the large number of failures simply because it is pointed out that they do not operate chiefly to cause elimination from school. The above facts may lead to some such conviction as that expressed by Wooley,[33b] after giving especial attention to those who had left school, that "the real force that is sending a majority of these children out into the industrial field is their own desire to go to work, and behind this desire is frequently the dissatisfaction with school." A somewhat similar conviction seems to be shared by King,[35] in saying that "the pupil who yields unwillingly to the narrow round of school tasks ... will grasp at almost any pretext to quit school." W.F. Book tabulated the reasons why pupils leave high school,[36] as given by 1,051 pupils. He found that discouragement, loss of interest, and disappointment affect more pupils than all the other causes combined. Likewise Bronner notes[37] that the 'irrational' sameness of school procedure for all pupils often leads to "serious loss of interest in school work, discouragement, truancy, and disciplinary problems." Still it may be that the worst consequences of multiplied failures are not to those dropping out. W.D. Lewis observes[38] that the failing pupil "speedily comes to accept himself as a failure," and that "the disaster to many who stay in the schools is greater than to those who are shoved out." To the same point Hanus tells[39] us that "during the school period aversion and evasion are more frequently cultivated than power and skill, through the forced pursuit of uninteresting subjects." A pupil who acquires the habit of failing and the attitude of accepting it as a necessary evil may soon give up trying to win and become satisfied to accept himself as less gifted, or even to accept life in general as necessarily a matter of repeated failures. In a similar connection, James E. Russell says,[40] "the boy who becomes accustomed to second place soon fails to think at his best." Such psychological results in regard to habits and attitude accruing from repeated failures are both certain and insidious. And an education which purports to be for all and to offer the highest training to each must abandon the inculcation of attitudes of mind so detrimental to the individual and to the very society which educates him.